China is gaining an increasingly favorable military position in the Indo-Pacific, leaving the United States no longer able to enjoy military primacy in the region, a new report by an Australian think tank has warned.
The Sydney-based United States Studies Centre says the region is now vulnerable to China making a quick move to secure a military or strategic advantage, with the cost of an American counter-move potentially too high to bear.
In its report, analysts also lament the “combined effect of ongoing wars in the Middle East, budget austerity, underinvestment in advanced military capabilities and the scale of America’s liberal order-building agenda has left the US armed forces ill-prepared for great power competition in the Indo-Pacific."
The report, titled, “Averting crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific,” adds that over the next decade, the U.S. defense budget “is unlikely to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy owing to a combination of political, fiscal and internal pressures."